Opportunity, Business—See [Business Chances].
OPPORTUNITY IN THE ORIENT
Let me remind you of that great painting called “Anno Domini,” which perhaps some of you have seen, and which vividly illustrates the unprecedented opportunity to-day in the extreme Orient. It represents an Egyptian temple from whose spacious courts a brilliant procession of soldiers, statesmen, philosophers, artists, musicians, and priests is advancing in triumphal march, bearing a huge idol, the challenge and the boast of heathenism. Across the pathway of the procession is an ass, whose bridle is held by a reverent-looking man, and upon whose back is a fair young mother with her infant child. It is Jesus entering Egypt in flight from the wrath of Herod, and thus crossing the path of aggressive heathenism. The clock strikes and the Christian era begins.—Arthur Judson Brown, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.
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OPPORTUNITY LOST
Everybody knows now of the telephone and its large usefulness. It was not so, however, back in the seventies. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell had hard work to arouse interest, and harder yet to enlist capital, in his invention. In an account of the struggles of those early days, the following incident appears:
He resolved on a desperate move, and he went to Chauncey M. Depew and offered him a one-sixth interest in the company if he would loan $10,000 to put the company on its feet. Depew took a week to consider the proposition. At the end of the week he wrote back that the incident might be considered closed. The telephone was a clever idea, but it was utterly lacking in commercial possibilities, and $10,000 was far too big a sum to risk in marketing an instrument that at best could never be more than a source of amusement.
Thus Depew let slip an opportunity to acquire for $10,000 an interest that to-day could not be bought for less than $25,000,000.
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